PSHE & RSE

PSHE Curriculum in Context: 

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Encouraging positive and healthy personal development is one of the central roles of children’s education in England (Children’s Commissioner, 2023). The importance of teaching children about life skills, finances, healthy relationships, how to keep safe amongst many more areas is of the upmost importance and ‘The Big Ask’ (2021) survey found that children want their education to prepare them for life. Along-side this the need to empower our students with the skills to be able to manage and maintain their physical and mental health in an integrative way, to help prevent escalations is something that needs addressing within schools in a more explicitly taught way. The need to introduce social and emotional learning has risen post pandemic with mental health referrals having risen 96% since 2019 (LGA, 2022), we know we need to address the importance of empowering students on mental health and helping them to understand coping mechanisms of how to navigate life during a time where there is an unhealthy emphasis on perfectionism, a lack of connection between individuals due to the increased use of technology and social media as well as pressures from daily life. 

Our curriculum aims to develop, empower and be thought provoking for our students in order for them to reflect, debate and challenge themselves and others on perspectives in a supportive and safe environment. We have built our lessons to develop a wide range of skills for our students including resilience, effective communication, team work, empathy and reflection to help them to see and hear things from differing perspectives enabling them to make informed choices about their life, next steps and future, having more of a positive contribution to the school and wider community. 

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Students will develop knowledge through a spiraling curriculum with themes repeated across the key stages with age-appropriate lessons and content. They will learn about how to prepare themselves for life now and preparing for life outside of education in all aspects of their life; careers, RSHE, financial skills, physical and mental health, safety, British Values, human rights and the running of the country. 

Curriculum Aims: 

Our curriculum aims to: 

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• Empower all students to feel confident to ask questions  

• Equip students with the skills to be able to understand the perspective of many different view points in order to form their own opinions  

• Give students the permission to feel, recognise, understand, label, express and regulate their emotions in a safe and non-judgmental way 

• Teach students how to recognise and understand safety risks in all walks of their life including how to minimise these risks 

• Empower our students to know how to make healthy and safe choices now and in their future life. 

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Our broad and balanced curriculum concentrates on developing our students’ key knowledge and skills, and enhances their understanding of the world around them.   

We do this by: 

Stimulating intellectual curiosity by introducing them to a broad range of topics whilst contextualising the reasons behind why they are learning it, so they understand how it is relevant to them. 

Facilitating collaboration through group projects, discussions and learning from one anothers experiences 

Promoting challenge for all through challenging their ethical approach to the world and getting them to reflect on their own moral compass. 

Enabling creativity by supporting them to be independent and expressing their own identity which in return will boost their own self concept 

Sequencing learning so there is age-appropriate context which is reviewed regularly based on the individual year group's needs.  

Revisiting previous learning to always check and gauge knowledge of the group already, to ensure knowledge is built on and not repeated, ensuring depth is developed at the right age.  

Our curriculum is focused on the development of communication, character and cultural capital of each individual student, so they become: 

• Confident in making their own choices and understanding the consequences of these choices 

• Compassionate towards themselves and those around them  

• Hardworking individuals who want to make a difference in their local and wider community  

• Knowledgeable on how to manage their own health and wellbeing including where to turn for support if it is needed.  

• Reflective and honest with themselves in order to overcome challenges they face. 

• Confident in their own identity. 

Curriculum Outcome: 

As a result of our curriculum students will leave RFSS having developed many of the skills and abilities needed for modern life.